The Planning Kit of Pinios River Basin, Greece:An Integrated Approach to Water-Food-Energy-Ecosystem Nexus Management

The Pinios River Basin (PRB), located in Thessaly, Central Greece, faces significant challenges in identifying sustainable solutions for managing its limited resources in a Water-Food-Energy-Ecosystem (WEFE) nexus context due to conflicting priorities among stakeholders. To address these challenges, an integrated tool—the Planning Kit for the PRB—was developed under the REXUS project of the European Union’s Horizon 2020 program. The Planning Kit aims to provide stakeholders with an overview of the WEFE nexus dynamics.

The PRB Planning Kit was co-developed with local stakeholders through workshops and working sessions to promote more informed and inclusive decision-making. It synthesizes the results of alternative management options as proposed by the stakeholders, utilizing the results of numerous trusted, detailed process-based models and supplementary literature reviews, enabling stakeholders to explore the summarized outcomes of pre-calculated scenarios and strategies without directly interacting with the underlying complex models.

The PRB Planning Kit is designed to facilitate the interpretation of data and modeling results by providing stakeholders with a comprehensive overview through a single, accessible interface. It highlights the interconnected nature of stakeholder responsibilities by demonstrating trade-offs and showing how decisions within one sector can influence other sectors in the WEFE nexus. Lastly, its sustainability after the project's completion is trusted to the local team, who has the expertise to refine local models’ application and play a pivotal role in the development of the PRB Planning Kit.